AMONG MY TRILOBITES

ESTABLISHED
570,000,000 B.C.

UPDATED
FEBRUARY 2010*

DETAIL FROM A STAINED
GLASS WINDOW

(see below)

Why trilobites? They are a tangible
link to a past so distant that they make us look almost contemporary
with dinosaurs. We think of dinosaurs as having lived a long time
ago but consider this: the height of the Cretaceous was
seventy million years ago. Had the Tyrannosaurs and Triceratops
looked down, they would have found trilobite fossils beneath their feet
that were already five hundred million years old! Trilobites were
tremendously diverse with a fantastic variety of forms comprising over
twenty thousand species. To learn about trilobites is to learn
about the ever-changing face of our planet. Besides, you
can afford a whole trilobite and hold it in your hand. Try that with a
dinosaur!

Hi, my name is Frank Galef. I live in the
northern part of San Diego County in California. I have been
interested in Paleontology as long as I can remember. For many
years I mostly thought of trilobites as a life form that came before
dinosaurs, usually depicted crawling in the mud at the bottom of an
ocean otherwise inhabited by uncomfortably unfamiliar creatures.
I had a few specimens of Elrathia sitting on bookshelf
and assumed that was about it for trilobites. In the early 1990's
I was at a point in my professional and personal life that I was
finally able to invest both some time and money in my long-neglected
interest in the past and began collecting some minerals and
fossils. Having viewed some of my nascent collection, an
acquaintance gave me a Phacops the size of a potato.
Its eyes were as nicely faceted as a gem and I was hooked.
I began haunting local rock shops and gem and mineral shows as well as
buying any books I could find that featured at least a few good
pictures of these fascinating animals. When I expressed
frustration to some of the dealers I met about the limited range of
specimens available, they began telling me about the annual Arizona
Fossil and Mineral Show in Tucson. Several trips there have added
greatly to my collection and my knowledge of the subject.
Around the same time I discovered the incredible resources available on
the Internet. It can be a bit lonely to be a trilobite
collector. Friends and acquaintances often enjoy looking at my
display cases, but that's about the extent of their
interest. On the other hand, the Internet makes it possible
to communicate with collectors and enthusiasts all over the world, so I
decided to try and do my part!

On this website I want to try to tell a little bit
about the world of the trilobites and how it relates to what we find
today. There are some other very good websites and I will tell
you about them. I don't want to duplicate what someone else has
already done; I don't have the space for it. There are too many
trilobites for anyone to hope to collect them all. Different
collectors have different reasons for what they put into their
collections. Some try to obtain representative examples of all of
the major orders, superfamilies and families. Others concentrate
on the species from a certain order, area or era. It is
also possible to try to get a trilobite from every country or a
set whose names begin with each letter of the alphabet. It
seems that most collectors just get what appeals to them, and there is
certainly enough variety to satisfy any taste or budget. The
trilobites shown here are from my collection, and I hope that it
continues to improve. A bit further down this page are some of my
thoughts about what I have discovered about the joys and risks of
building a collection and perhaps a bit of why I have the specimens
that occupy my shelves and cabinets.

PALEOZOIC: THE
TRILOBITE TIMES

Modern multicellular life appeared
in the fossil record during the Paleozoic era. Trilobites were a
dominant life form during much of the 325 million years of the
Paleozoic. The Earth was very different with continents
colliding, forming and breaking apart. Nothing resembled modern
landforms. Trilobites, of course, lived in the oceans, and in
trying to understand their range and distribution it is necessary to
recognize the reorganization of the Earth's crust that turned
their watery world into today's mountains. Many of their final
resting places are still under the seabed, and countless others have
been subducted, melted and ground to bits by tectonic actions. I
will show some basic maps of the periods of the Paleozoic and try to
connect them with their modern counterparts, as well as show some
representative trilobites. Major, well-known landmasses are labeled in
green. The red names show the areas in the oceans that will
eventually be pushed up to form the land where trilobites are
found. To see the geological periods and their representative
specimens, click on the link to that period. The specimen labels
show the name and state or country of origin. Beneath each
specimen is additional data including the size of the specimen and
information about the location where it was found. This is
based on the information supplied by the dealer, when available.

Trilobite classification is still very much a work in
progress. I am attempting to display my collection by geologic
period. In each period the specimens will be organized according
to their Order and Suborder or Superfamily, then species. Yahoo
Trilobite Club member Sam Gon III has done a great job of presenting
the salient points of current trilobite
classification according to his synthesis of the current,
but incomplete Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology,Part Owith its 1959 predecessor, the original Treatise.
The list of orders includes: Agnostida, Redlichida,
Corynexochida, Lichida, Phacopida, Proetida, Asaphida, Ptychoparida and
now Harpetida has been added. Most orders did not
exist throughout the entire Paleozoic, but several did have members
extending through several periods. The basis for this
classification is not always clear. If you want further details,
please check out Sam's A Guide to the Orders of Trilobites
. His website also has a great guide to Trilobite Anatomy and a
Glossary of Trilobite terms. Sam continues to add to his
website and it now has animations of a walking trilobite, a molting
trilobite and I'm waiting for Sam to demonstrate how they reproduced
with all those spines. I also want to thank fellow collector Jim
Cook for his assistance in providing a great deal of information to
make my identifications as accurate as possible.

If you want to know more about the changing nature of
the face of the Earth, check out some of the links at the end of this
page.

It has been a while, but I am finally getting around to
making some updates. I didn't get to the Tucson Show again this
year, haven't seen much on Ebay that I wanted to fight over and have
been busy with a lot of other things. That's life, but back to
dead things... I realized that a lot of my links were outdated,
so I cleaned them up and added some new ones.

I am also planning to continue upgrading many of my photos
and will make some changes in the way I present them. Information
about the specimen will be displayed with the image rather than at the
bottom of the page and I plan to include some discussion about many of
them. When possible I will try to highlight some of the special
features that help to identify a species and for many of them I will
include some additional personal thoughts and trilobite gossip
reflecting my personal perspective as a collector of these fascinating
fossils.

*******************************************

MARCH
2006

I recently bought a
new Dremel and while that is not a very good tool for working on the
surface of a fossil, it does wonderful things for matrix. I have
had some fun with some of my older Moroccan-prepped specimens by
cleaning up the surfaces around the fossils and in some cases exposing
parts of the fossil that wasn't even originally visible. It's
somewhat of a matter of personal preference, but I find the "standard"
preparation technique that surrounds the trilobite with radiating
grooves cut into dark grey limestone to be somewhat distracting.
I have been grinding a lot of those grooves off and cleaning up the
edges of the fossils themselves, which makes them look a lot
better. At least I think so. I will try to start adding
new, higher resolution images of many of them as time permits!

***************************************

I am still going to try to update some of my
labels. Many Moroccan trilobites were named according to their
resemblance to trilobites found elsewhere, such as in Europe.
They are now being renamed as they are formally described or as it is
realized that a specimen with an informal name has already been given a
name somewhere in formal literature. I'll try to deal with these
matters as time permits and I certainly won't guarantee that I'll get
them right the first few times I try.

The picture at the top of this page is a detail from
the stained glass window sidelight in my home's entry. My
wife commissioned it for our 28th wedding anniversary. It
also features crinoids, ammonites, baculites and a
nautiloid. Speaking of this, I am still thinking about
working on a page for Ammonites. I have collected a lot of these
beautiful fossils over the years, and it seems that they deserve some
attention.

REAL ADVENTURES IN
COLLECTING

Most of the fossils displayed in these
pages were purchased at rockshops, shows and on Ebay, but it is fun and
exciting to find your own. Many collectors have ONLY what they
have found. Obviously, I am very interested in finding
connections to the past and my wife simply likes "finding stuff".
We have taken a few trips to see what we can dig up and I'm trying to
create some pages to show where we've been and what we've found.
I hope they look like fun and encourage others to get out, get some
fresh air and find some good stuff.

Some pictures from our most recent trip
can be seen here: Arizona 2005.

Here is a recap of our trip to the U-Dig Quarry in
Utah from June of 2002.

This is an account of a try at digging
up trilobites in Southern California's San Bernardino County's Marble
Mountains.

REAL ADVENTURES IN
BUYING BUGS

Many fossil collectors want only what
they personally find in the field. Some may trade with friends
who are fossil-finders but are not inclined to allow anything on their
shelves if the provenance is not personally known. That
attitude is great, but if you don't happen to live close to a locale
where your favorite fossils are underfoot, a lot of time and travel can
be involved. Many collectors don't have the time and
resources to visit Morocco or Russia, so it makes sense to them to pay
for a nice specimen. Then the question is "what to buy?"
While different people have different interests and vastly different
budgets, I can make some remarks about what motivates me to acquire the
specimens that are in my collection.

When I began my collection, I would buy
almost anything that I could find that was a trilobite as long as it
was something I hadn't seen before. That resulted in my acquiring
a number of "partials", specimens missing a cheek or cheeks or even the
entire pygidium. They may have been incomplete but they
sure looked exotic to me at the time. I did shy away from the
incredibly expensive spiny bugs on display in some fancier rock shops
as I couldn't believe that anybody would actually pay hundreds of
dollars for a fossil. That was definitely a good thing as I
now know the stratospheric mark-up on those pieces as well as realizing
the likelihood that they if not heavily restored, they were not really
the best possible examples of their species that could be
found. In my first trip to the Tucson Show in 1997, I
arrived late and mostly picked over what hadn't already been snapped up
by seasoned buyers. I had no ambition to buy anything with
free-standing spines and didn't even know the names of the vast
majority of the species available. It was exciting to come home
with a few small pieces from Oklahoma and a batch of inexpensive
Moroccan specimens, the names of which I had to write down to be sure
that I could remember them. Later that year I bought a
computer and discovered the wide range of information available about
trilobites on the Internet. Subsequent trips to the Tucson Show
were even more exciting and at the same time I was delighted to find
that Ebay could be a great source of trilobites. I have certainly
become more comfortable in buying spines, although given the nature of
the marketplace I often feel that almost any purchase can be an
adventure. As I look back at what I have brought home, I
have tried to decide what appeals to me and what factors go into my
decision to bring home a given bug. Other collectors may
have very different perspectives, but here is what I look for and how I
try to be reasonably certain that I will be happy with what I decide to
buy.

SHOULD I SHOP FOR A SPECIFIC SPECIES?

This is often a tough question. I
have gone to shows with the intention to shop for a nice specimen of a
particular species that interests me. Usually it turns out that
none are available, or if there are any, they are either far too
expensive or not something that I want to display. On the other
hand, I have also found exactly what I wanted at the first dealer I
visited and I still had a lot of time left. I do know that other
collectors are doggedly looking for one special species to complete a
specific grouping in their cabinet. They will visit a long list
of dealers as well as perusing fossil-selling websites and
carefully monitoring Ebay. Anyhow, I am rarely so focused
and usually end up going for what happens to appeal to me when I
see it.

SHOULD I BUY ONLY A COMPLETE
FOSSIL?

First of all, there is probably no such
thing as a complete fossil. Soft parts are almost always gone and
depending on closely one looks, something is almost invariably broken
or missing. Many fossils with substantial scientific value are
only partial cephalons, pleurae or pygidiums. In fact, some
pygidiums are the most interesting and appealing part of the entire
animal and may be a lot more affordable than a complete specimen, if
one can be found at any price. One example might be the broad and
spiny tail end of an Acanthopyge, a species that was
almost never found intact until a few pockets of complete bugs were
discovered and marketed around the turn of this century. On
the other hand, I do like to have something that looks nice when
displayed. While my sense of aesthetics is certainly a big factor
here, it is also partly due to my sense that other people looking at a
display are more likely to be interested in something that is
recognizable as an entire organism. One of the joys for me in
having a collection is seeing how it appeals to and educates people who
would otherwise have had no idea at all that trilobites ever
existed. In most museums, displays are far more likely to attract
attention when they feature a complete dinosaur rather than a drawer
with a few fragments of bone, a coprolite and an odd tooth or
two. I do have self-collected examples of stomatolites,
partial Olenellus head shields, crinoid stems and horn
corals on my shelves, but I have to admit that they don't provoke
anything near the reaction that I see when someone first comes nose to
nose with a complete Koneprussia.

While "completeness" may be an ideal, I
rarely achieve it. I am often seduced by a nice pair of eyes and
later realize that a bunch of pleural tips are missing. I have
paid for fossils to obtain a shining crenellated pygidium, only to
realize later that the eyes are crushed or one of the genal spines is
missing. This is a particular risk when dealing with spiny
trilobites and "flying" preparations as those special features may be
the only appealing attribute of an otherwise mediocre and damaged
fossil. In many cases, later inspection at home reveals bumps,
scrapes and dings that I managed to miss when I was writing the
check. This is not to say that I necessarily wouldn't have bought
the specimen anyhow; it just surprises me to see how easy it is to be
succumb to the allure of one particularly nice feature. I do
carry a pair of reading glasses and often a ten power head magnifier
when shopping, but I still manage to surprise myself at what I
missed. I mention this as a cautionary point of advice as it can
be tough to look this carefully when buying from a website or on
Ebay. It can be tough to do "due diligence" if you can't
get up close and personal with the fossil. Many sellers will
provide additional images, but you have to think to ask. In
some cases, flaws can be used as bargaining points to move a price in
your favor. Of course, in other cases, you may be told you are
lucky to get such a piece at any price, but it usually doesn't hurt to
ask.

IS IT A REAL FOSSIL?

This may seem like a weird question when
the whole subject is fossils, but it is one of the most contentious
subjects among trilobite collectors. There are some nice replicas
of trilobites available and they provide a quick and inexpensive way to
have a nice display. These would be great for hanging on a wall
in a school or office. While not as pricey as genuine, exotic
specimens, some replicas can be very expensive. In any case, it
is fine to buy a cast or sculpture as long as it is clearly labeled as
such and you know what you are buying. Some real trilobites have
restoration to parts that were lost while the animal was alive, damaged
during the fossilization process or dinged while being discovered and
prepared. On the other hand, there are a lot of specimens for sale as
genuine that are composites made from pieces of several fossils,
covered with fake spines or are completely plastic bugs. If you
thought you got a good example of an unusual fossil, it would be pretty
awful to discover you had paid for something other than what you
thought you were buying. Some dealers are very quick to identify
and explain exactly what you are buying; others are less forthcoming.
Part of the problem is that the entire process of getting a
trilobite from mountain to market may involve a lengthy chain of
interrupted possession. There are some dealers who find, prepare
and sell their own material, but that most people who are this business
need to move more product than that style allows if they want their
business to remain viable. Thus the dealer may not have been in
control of the entire process of discovery and preparation and ends up
relying on the word of others who may not be honest about what
has been done to the piece. Of course, the dealer may well
be, shall we say, "ethically challenged" regarding the condition of
their merchandise. I suspect that some of the problem may be
cultural. The trilobite trade is international in scope and I can
see how some things may get altered in translation.
Sometimes when you ask, "Is it real?", they may reply, "Yes", meaning
it is real in the sense that it is what it is and it actually
exists. OK, that isn't very satisfying, but in many parts of the
world it seems that all is fair in business and you can take that to
the bank. Getting accused of fraud may be unpleasant but can also
be considered a risk of doing business and there are always plenty of
other customers to replace a few that are dissatisfied. Some
dealers only admit to reconstruction when specifically asked and after
admitting to reconstructing one spine can allow you to think that all
the rest are real. Here are a couple of essays on the
subject of fake trilobites, written by experts in the fossil
preparation trade:

It is easy to see how someone could
become totally paranoid after reading these articles. Some people
say that "all Moroccan and Russian fossils are bondo" or that any spine
you see must be fake. Many dealers and preparators make veiled
allusions to perfidy on the part of other purveyors, but it is tough to
get anyone to go on the record regarding who is selling stuff that is
more resin than real. Some of this reticence is almost certainly
due to fears of getting sued for slander or having other dealers
retaliate by sullying their reputation, but a lot of it relates to
recognizing the uncertainties of the fossil business and recognition of
the fact that it is really tough to be in complete control of the
process from the quarry to the retail display. 99% of what a
dealer sells may be above reproach, but what should a customer think if
they end up with a questionable specimen? I do think that it is
possible to get real and beautiful specimens from these areas. It
pays to be diligent and work with dealers to develop a level of
trust over time. I would certainly caution anyone against buying
high end fancy specimens on their first foray into the
marketplace.

SHOULD I BUY SOME REAL EYE CANDY?

How much do aesthetics count? In
looking at a fossil I often wonder how well it will
display. How much more is it worth if it is completely laid
out on its matrix instead of curled up, twisted or partially squashed
on one side? Some species are tough to find except as balled-up
"rollers". Many appear to be doing a dive in the pike position
while others are often sharply arched into a pose that would give a
circus contortionist a backache. There is definitely some charm
to each of these poses, but it makes them tough to photograph and
unless I want to place them on a rotating platform, their best side
must be picked before they go into the case.

A really well prepared trilobite is a
stunning piece of art as well as a natural object. The work
being done by the best preppers on many Russian and Moroccan fossils is
amazing, and the same is true of some of the material from Canada,
Ohio, Utah and Oklahoma. The shell material on the top trilobites
is translucent and the surface detail can be captivating, not to
mention the beauty of the lenses in the eyes and, of course, the
attention-grabbing free-standing spines. There is an arms
race of sorts going on these days among prep-artists to see what is
possible and every year they seem to be doing what used to seem
impossible. Spines that used to be considered best left in
matrix are now extracted and the entire specimen is left on a fragile
pedestal. Of course this does cost money and a budget is an
important thing to bring along on any shopping expedition.
How much is such artistry worth? I recently saw two spectacular
examples of the same spiny species sitting side by side. One was
almost twice as expensive as the other and after several minutes of
careful comparison, I could not tell the difference. I asked the
preparator and he told me that the disparity was evident if observed at
30X magnification and that for some collectors it was worth the extra
cost.

The Tucson Show is a great source for
high-end material and there are also a lot of wonderful specimens
available through Internet websites. When visiting the Show, I
may make one or two major purchases but rarely more than that.
Expense aside, shopping for a fancy fossil can be quite an
adrenaline-provoking experience and having gone through it, I kind of
like to go home and "bond" with my acquisition. I may be
enchanted with a new trilobite but the personal impact is lost if there
are too many new bugs all at once.

This brings me to one final thought
about the fossil-buying experience and that is

THE TUPPERWARE FACTOR

Once a fancy trilobite has been
purchased, an important question arises: how do you safely get it
home? These things are extremely fragile and once something
breaks off, it can really tough to repair if you can even find the
pieces. It is tough to hand carry such merchandise for more than
a few feet before something goes wrong. Carefully setting it in a
box filled with packing peanuts just won't work and you simply cannot
wrap free-standing spines with bubblewrap. Traditionally I have
seen dealers use large amounts of museum wax to attach the matrix to a
base and then cunningly construct arches and cylinders of cardboard to
provide protection before sealing the entire opus with yards of postal
tape. Many Russian fossils come in their own custom-made wooden
boxes, held in place with wires strung through pre-cut holes and
carefully tied in the back. I have also seen a few fossils
glued into plastic boxes. All of these methods may protect the
merchandise until it gets home, but then extricating it can be an
adventure and such systems are practically impossible to use again if
you ever have to move. The latest response to this problem is
Tupperware. The fossil is attached to the inside of the lid with
a screw into a hole drilled into the underside of the matrix and this
becomes the bottom of the fossil-restraint and shipping
system. The clear bowl of the Tupperware, which is now the
top, is then attached and the fossil is good to go. This works
beautifully to protect the specimen, and it is easy to remove as long
as it is a screw together system. True "burping" Tupperware
with a really strong snapping cap can be scary to open, but then real
Tupperware is too expensive and for the most part everyone seems to use
the cheaper knock-offs with screw-on lids. Over the last couple
of years I have seen Tupperware packing become very common at the
Tucson Show, particularly among the Moroccan dealers. This has
led to an interesting business practice. If good stuff is packed
in Tupperware, anything packed in the stuff must therefore be good, and
if it were junk, it wouldn't be in Tupperware, right?! There is now a
lot of very marginal stuff displayed on Tupperware lids, apparently in
the hope that the plastic shipping container will provide some aura of
verisimilitude to the fossil. I recently saw one remarkably huge
would-be Dicranarus that appeared to be made mostly of
hand-rolled PlayDoh resting uncomfortably on a slab of limestone
screwed to the top of a Tupperware salad bowl large enough to be used
for bathing a medium sized child. Hey, it was valuable to be in
Tupperware, so it must have been real. Right? You still
have to be careful with packing your fossils and the buyer must still
still beware.

For more details on some of my
"adventures" in buying trilobites, please check out the descriptions on
my specimen pages. As time permits, I will add some
comments.

TRILOBITE CLUB: I am a
member of the
YAHOO TRILOBITES2
CLUB . For several years, the Yahoo Trilobites Club was a
fantastic gathering point for trilobitophiles from around the
world. For some reason, it vanished last year as if a major
asteroid had crashed into the WorldWide Web, but thanks to Dr. Sam Gon
III, a new Club arose to take its place. Say what you want about any
club that will have me as a member, but Trilobites2 is a
wonderful resource on the Internet for anyone with an Interest in
Bugs! Check it out; you don't have to be a member to look.

I NOW HAVE A
GUESTBOOK ON THE LAST PAGE, SO SIGN AND LEAVE YOUR TRACKWAY TRACE!